An Accident of Stars (43 page)

“There!” said Leoden, exasperated. “
Now
do you believe me?”

“I believe
her
,” said Gwen. Another tremor shook the palace, violent enough to unsettle her footing, but any triumph in Leoden's gaze was quickly supplanted by a flash of real fear, and if Trishka's words alone hadn't been enough to spur her to action, the combination certainly would've done it.

“Take us there,” said Gwen, to the guards, as well as Leoden. “Now.”

The lead guard flicked her gaze to Viya. “Highness?”

To her credit, Viya didn't hesitate. “As she said.”

“I'll stay,” said Trishka, quiet and sudden. “I'll only slow you down.”

“Trishka–”

“I don't want to leave her alone.”

Grief rose in Gwen's throat. Her boy was alive, and Trishka's girl was dead. If she let herself think about that now, she'd never leave the room. She looked at her friend, and in a moment of wordless communication, she felt their doubled grief like a hammerblow. “We'll leave you guarded then,” Viya said, breaking the silence. She didn't wait for Gwen to agree, but singled out two of Leoden's entourage, murmuring instructions for them to keep watch on the chambers.

“Are you quite done?” Leoden said, irritation bleeding into his tone.

“Mind your tongue!” snapped Pix.

“We'll come back for you,” Gwen said to Trishka – needlessly, because of course they would, and yet she couldn't bring herself to omit saying it. “Both of you.”

“We'll be here,” Trishka said, and then they were leaving Kadeja's chambers, necessity reasserting itself in the face of private grief. The remaining guards formed up around Leoden, Gwen half-leading beside him. As much to anchor herself as for any more pragmatic reason, she watched the Vex side-on, wondering what he was planning.
Fool me once,
she thought bitterly. She didn't believe for a second that his intentions were purely altruistic, and on top of everything else, she was suspicious of how calmly he'd taken the news of Kadeja's disappearance and Amenet's return.

“You don't trust me,” Leoden said, quietly enough that Gwen alone could hear him.

“Is there any particular reason why I should?”

“The word of your friend isn't grounds enough?”

“Honesty about one thing doesn't preclude lying about another.”

“True,” said Leoden, as though the admission cost him nothing. And perhaps it didn't; the man was layers on layers, and just because he was unsettled enough to let Gwen see this much of him didn't mean he had nothing still hidden.

It was a terrifying thought, and one that preoccupied her all the way through the palace. They moved quickly, quietly, the shaking ground more evident the deeper they went in the structure. More than once, they heard the sound of distant fighting echo through the halls, but they neither slowed nor stopped, and once they reached the lower levels, it ceased altogether.

Gwen had never been this deep in the palace before, and as they alighted yet another twisting stair, she began to feel uneasy. Grief and tension hung over her like a pall. As Leoden led them down narrower and narrower paths, even the guards grew anxious.

“This isn't a trap,” said Leoden, suddenly enough to startle even Gwen. His voice rang in the tight space, his eyes made tawny by the spelled glow of firelights studding the walls. “I have no allies waiting.”

Pix muttered something that might have been a Vekshi curse, and before Gwen could think to reply, a violent tremor startled her words away. Viya yelped, and two guards swore as they almost lost their footing, drawn swords clattering uselessly against hard stone. The very air twisted and growled, as though they were approaching the lair of some massive, snorting beast, and when Leoden said, “We're close,” Gwen shuddered.

The next turn brought them to a single door set in a dead end, dark and imposing. There was no keyhole and no handle: instead, Leoden pressed his palm flat to the surface and spoke a word Gwen didn't know. A blue ripple flashed through the metal surface, and with a sudden hiss, the door swung open, revealing a tight, dark aperture. Leoden made to enter first, but before he could cross the threshold, the guard captain held out an arm and stopped him.

“Highness,” she said, head tilted back towards Viya, “I would suggest my honoured swords go first.”

Leoden rolled his eyes, but Viya said, “Of course.”

Gwen's neck prickled with foreboding, but as she had no reason to gainsay the suggestion, she kept quiet as a trio of soldiers took the lead, the captain just behind. She came next with Leoden, followed by Pix and Viya and, behind them, the remaining guards. The space beyond the door was so narrow that it was impossible to walk more than two abreast – and even then, it was a tight fit – and so dark that, for a moment, Gwen couldn't see anything. The passage zigged and zagged, sharp turns in the black.

“This was originally a treasure vault built by Vexa Yavin,” Leoden murmured. “Or so the archivists tell me. It was sealed up and forgotten since her death.” With a smile in his voice that Gwen more felt than saw, he added, “I put it to use again.”

And then the passage turned again, opening into searing brightness, and in the seconds where Gwen was blinded, several things happened at once.

The whole room shook with a furious roar, a blast of unseen power knocking them back like the leading edge of a hurricane.

The guards screamed, a visceral sound the roaring couldn't quite disguise, chilling Gwen's blood as she scrabbled for purchase.

Leoden darted forwards, evading Gwen's grasp. She swore, stumbling as her vision came back, blinking away the after-images of whatever the flash had been–

–in time to see Leoden leap through the heart of an anchored portal, its blue-black edges snapping out like angry, electric tentacles to crash at the tethering stone. Its wild, lashing magic had brought down two of the guards; the portal itself was the source of both sound and shaking. Leoden vanished from sight, and though Gwen lunged after him, the portal collapsed on itself before she could follow him, as though it had only awaited him all along.

The sudden silence was deafening, like having her ears boxed. One of the injured guards whimpered, and in a daze that was half due to Leoden's absence, half in shock at what had happened, Gwen kept moving forwards.

And found herself at a railing above the edge of a deep, round pit.

She looked down.

There were people chained down there. No, not just people – at least one prisoner clearly wasn't human at all, but something else entirely, covered all over in pale green scales with slitted eyes and too-long legs that bent the wrong way at the knee. An iron shackle circled its overlong neck, but the blood dripping from an open gash on its temple was red as her own. But the others – the others were people, but…

“Worldwalkers,” Gwen whispered, appalled. “They're all worldwalkers.”She gripped the rail, hard, because just at that moment, it was the only thing keeping her upright. She stared down at a frightened girl with purple hair – whether dyed or naturally so, Gwen couldn't tell – whose ragged clothes showed the bruising on her skin. Shivering in her bonds, the girl refused to meet Gwen's gaze, chains clanking as she wrapped her arms around herself. Gwen counted twenty-odd captives – five of them inhuman to her eyes – before she looked away, all of them battered and bruised in ways that spoke to endurance of torture.

“Gwen, what–? Oh. Oh,
gods
.” Pix halted beside her, staring into the pit with a look on her face of abject horror. “Are they…?”

“Yes.”

“And he just…?”

“Fled,” said Gwen, leadenly. “No telling where. For all we know, he's left the world completely.” She bowed her head, fighting a fruitless impulse to smash her fist on the railing. “Thorns and godshit, I
knew
he was planning something!”

Pix's voice was high and tight. “But what did he
want
with them all?”

Gwen stared into that awful pit – at Leoden's bloody, battered captives – and felt her throat close over. On top of everything else, it was a complication they didn't need, the weight of her failures pressing her down like a second, malevolent gravity.

“I don't know,” she said, helplessly. “Gods help me, but I've no idea at all.”

S
affron hit the ground hard
, gasping as the breath was knocked from her lungs. Her thoughts were a thunder of pain and regret and grief all mingled –
no, no, no, I should've stayed, I should've
helped – but the portal was gone, the night air sharp with its absence, and nothing she could say or do would bring it back again.

Too stunned to move, she lay like a ragdoll, staring blankly ahead as her tears soaked into the dirt. It was night, but even in the darkness, she already knew that the grass beneath her was green Earth-grass, that the sky above was a black, Earth-sky populated with familiar constellations like the Southern Cross and the Big Dipper and illuminated by just the one, nameless moon, and that when the sun rose, it would be her familiar, yellow Sol, and not the whiter, too-big sun of Kena and Veksh.

She was home again, and Zech was dead.

Home, where mum and dad and Ruby would be waiting for her, out of their minds with fear and grief that she'd been abducted, abused and dumped in a ditch, or fretting that they'd somehow driven her away. Home, where her friends would still be going to Lawson High, like Saffron would be expected to do. Home, where no one would expect her to battle dragons or soldiers or involve herself in politics, and where every scrap of power she'd amassed in Veksh and Kena from doing just that would be denied her. Home, where nobody knew to mourn the loss of a calico girl who'd made herself a queen.

Home, which would never be home again.

She closed her eyes, breathing in the familiar scent of dry earth and crushed gumleaves. Careful of her newly-bruised arms, she rolled onto her side and sat up, running her hands across her stubbled head. She was still dressed in her Vekshi clothes, a fresh kettha and dou she'd donned only that morning, made of plain white fabric which could, she supposed, pass for a homemade karate
gi
, if anyone asked. Which they would, invariably; of course they would.

And Saffron would have to lie.

“It's too soon,” she said, hopelessly. But she was alone. There was no one left to answer her, and this had been her choice. Hadn't it? A bubble of thwarted rage swelled and popped in her chest. All her life, she'd grown up with stories about Alice and Dorothy and the Pevensie children, happy little worldwalkers whose travels were cathartic, preordained, complete; and even though she'd known, from her very first day in Kena, that none of those rules applied to her, she'd still assumed she'd be there for the finale. Would she still have regretted leaving, if not for that glimpse of Leoden coming through the doors? Saffron didn't know, which was somehow worse than if she had. She needed to know, with an ache that threatened to split her in half, that her friends were all right; that Leoden hadn't simply walked in and killed them all; that someone would go back for Zech's body and see her buried, not left to rot in Kadeja's chambers.

But now she was home, and it wasn't about what Saffron needed, not anymore. She was here for her family, she realised, not for herself; here to end their misery at the expense of prolonging her own. She bowed her head to the ground and imagined Gwen was there beside her, offering that particular blend of practical truth and comfort which had, in another lifetime, won Saffron's trust. She heard her thoughts in Gwen's voice, warm and rueful, a mix of things she'd said before, or that she imagined her saying.

Life isn't a story, no matter what the Shavaktiin say. There's no neat beginnings, no happy endings, because everything always keeps on going. That's just life, girl. That's all it is: life, and lives, and all of them lived overlapping. The beauty and curse of mortality is we only live once, in just one place and just one time; our lives don't stop because important things are happening to other people, but their lives don't stop for us, either.
Right here and now, you're home, and you have to deal with it. You have to keep going. OK?

“OK,” Saffron whispered.

Somehow, impossibly, she stood, and only then did she recognise the Lawson High grounds. She was in the same scrap of bushland where Trishka's first portal had opened.
You don't know that weeks have really passed,
she suddenly thought.
Maybe Gwen was wrong, and it's still the same night.

It was a beautiful lie, and one that Saffron dearly wished were true. But she couldn't make herself believe it, not after everything that had happened.

All at once, the night felt oppressive. The distant sound of cars driving past, once so familiar as to be wholly unremarkable, almost a non-noise, now sounded alien and out of place. Zech's death had torn a hole in her heart, and coming home had only made it worse.

She remembered her lie, the one she'd helped to build with Gwen. She'd have to change parts of her story to fit what had happened, but it still ought to work. She turned, trying to remember the quickest route to the police station, and forced herself to start walking.

Let's get this over with.

T
he station was further away
than she remembered, but after so much time spent tramping around Kena, the extra distance didn't faze her. From outside, the electric lights looked cold and forbidding, but Saffron had faced a dragon beneath the bones of Yevekshasa, and with that thought, she made herself walk in. There was no need to hide her weariness, her fear. They would, after all, be expected.

The place was empty except for the duty sergeant, and as soon as he spotted Saffron, his eyes went wide.

“Fuckin' Christ,” he said, and then remembered himself. “Shit. Sorry. Shit!” He came to his feet in a scramble, yelling out into the office, “Someone get DS Roycroft up here, now! His missing person just walked in!”

Sure enough, when Saffron glanced at a nearby corkboard, there she was: or rather, there she had been. The girl in the photo was long-haired and smiling, dressed in the white collared blouse of the Lawson High uniform – her most recent school photo, taken at the end of last year. There was no corresponding photo of Gwen.

And then the police were there: not only the startled desk sergeant, but two female officers and, eventually, the fabled DS Roycroft, who'd been running the (unsurprisingly fruitless) investigation into her disappearance. Though he did his best to hide it, he was clearly startled when Saffron assured him, as firmly as she could, that the strange woman seen loitering on school grounds the day of her disappearance hadn't been her abductor, but a fellow captive. They'd tried to escape together, but had gotten separated in the attempt.

“I don't know where she is now,” she said, and then added, with a raw, unfaked honesty, “I don't even know if she's still alive.”

Roycroft's suspicions abated at that, though his curiosity remained strong. Not strong enough, however, to completely forget police protocol. Rather than ask more questions, he handed Saffron over to the care of the female officers, who in turn took her to have a medical examination. Though she'd expected as much – even without her obvious scarring and missing fingers, the fresh bruises Zech had left on her arms were enough to raise questions – her heart still lurched with anxiety.

She felt awful for thinking it, but the kindness of the attending officers and the female medical examiner only made things worse. They treated her as if she was made of eggshells, voices soft, avoiding eye contact. It was like they were simultaneously afraid of her and for her, but couldn't bring themselves to say as much out loud. The worst part was when they asked if she wanted a rape kit; she shook her head, not wanting to be swabbed anywhere, let alone her genitals, and pointedly refused to let them take any other samples, either. Gently, they tried to explain that it could help catch her assailant, especially if she still had their skin under her nails, but she refused; the only DNA they'd find that way was Zech's, and possibly a residual trace of Viya or Pix, and while none of those samples would trigger anything on the police database, her recent proximity to multiple strange women would contradict her made-up story.

Finally, after what felt like an age, it was over. Her clothes were taken away as evidence (she gave in on that count only because it made her look cooperative, and because in the event that strange DNA was found on them, it would be easier to argue that she didn't know how it had got there). In place of the kettha, dou and Vekshi underwraps, she was given a plain pair of cotton undies, a bra that was a size too big, a pair of white slippers and a pale blue slip that was functionally identical to a hospital gown, with the notable exception of not gaping open at the back.

Only then was she led, quiet and somehow feeling more naked than before, to a dull-looking interview room. The floor was hard blue carpet, the chairs beige, the single table made of cheap brown chipboard. DS Roycroft was already there. As she was a minor, he said, protocol dictated that they wait to conduct her interview until either her parents or a representative from DOCS, the Department of Child Services, arrived to supervise. Then he paused, licking his lips, and said, “But if you want to get it over with, we can just go right ahead.”

There were two female officers who could do the job, he added, but if Saffron didn't object, it would just be himself and PC Thomas. The latter was a round-faced white girl with a galaxy of freckles and red hair pulled back in a messy braid; under different circumstances, Saffron suspected she might have liked her. Almost, she was tempted to make Roycroft give up his spot out of spite, but she was exhausted by then, and didn't feel it was worth the effort, and she sure as hell didn't want to have to wait any longer to tell her lie, let alone give it in front of some DOCS worker or – worse still – her parents.

“OK,” she said, hoarsely.

G
wen Vere
– that's the other woman who vanished, the one from the school – she stopped me from being harassed by another student, Jared Blake, at lunch. She said she was thinking of applying for a job at the school and wanted to get a look at the campus. I wanted to thank her for helping me, so after school, I went looking to see if she was still there. She'd been for a walk along the cross country track, and I found her by the chemistry labs. We started talking. She was nice. We got quite close to the footpath that runs by the road, but we had our backs to it, and suddenly this guy jumped out and attacked me. He was white, somewhere in his forties; I don't remember much more than that. I think he'd seen my uniform and thought I was alone, but when he realised Ms Vere – Gwen – was there too, he went for her as well. She tried to fight him off, but he was pretty strong, and then I got knocked out. I think I was put in a car boot after that, but the next thing I remember, both of us were tied up in a basement, and the guy was wrapping a blindfold around my head.

He kept talking to people who weren't there – not invisible friends, but characters in a story. He wanted to play the hero, someone he'd created, and that's why he'd taken us, to be his props. So everything he did to me – he was really only interested in me; he cut Gwen a bit once, when she started yelling at him to stop –it was all just part of the story. It doesn't really make sense, I know, but even though he was the one doing everything, he only thought of himself as the hero, and I was the damsel he needed to save. But before he could save me, somebody had to hurt me, so there was something he could rescue me from.

No, I don't think he was mentally ill. He was lucid. Functional. He'd just made up a story, and he wanted me to be part of it. No, I didn't see him take any drugs or pills. Not even once.

He cut my fingers off on the first night, after he shaved my head. He was acting like someone else then, but once it was done – once he'd “saved” me from the villain – he sat me down and stitched it all back up again. No, I don't know if he'd had any medical training; I didn't even see what he did. He kept the blindfold on me the whole time. But I guess I've healed pretty well. He did disinfect my wounds, I know that much – it hurt so much when he did my fingers, I screamed and passed out. But at least he cleaned it up. The other scars… that was weirder. It was hard to tell, but I think part of the story was about rescuing me from dragons, like a captured princess in a fairy tale. So he had this sort of glove, like a claw-glove – I mean, I guess that's what it was. It's not like he had an actual dragon or anything, and the blindfold wasn't so dark that I couldn't see the outline of things. It was blurry, but it just looked like he had something weird strapped to his hand. And he used it on me.

He used it on me a lot.

But it was like with the fingers, too. As soon as it was over, he cleaned everything up. He wanted to save me, he said. It wasn't really him, it was the villain, it was the dragons, it was always something else. The tattoo was part of it, too; he did that when I was knocked out, like everything else. I don't quite remember when. And Gwen – well, I guess she was his audience. He only ever spoke to her if she interrupted. But most of the time, he just left us alone in the basement. He'd untie us, but keep the blindfolds on, and tell us he had a knife or a gun, and to stay where we were until he was out of the room. Then, once the door closed, we could take the blindfolds off, and he'd have left us food. There was a sink and a toilet in the corner, and a couple of old mattresses, but that was it. And when he wanted to come back in again, he'd stand outside the door and say the same thing: that he was armed, that we had to put on the blindfolds and face the wall, or else he'd kill us. Then he'd come back in, tie us up, and the story would keep going.

I didn't really know how long we were down there. It was hard to keep track of the days. There was one window, but we'd sleep during the day, and he didn't always come down to us at the same time.